NOW, the Tribute finally opened up, and all its concealed Crescents and MF Gunboats raced after the squadrons already zipping around out there to lock down the confused and directionless deathships that hadn’t been atomized.

The targeting prisms had all shattered, and six seconds of that much reality was too much for the Rifts, which also closed.

The capital ships of the Fleet scattered in precise formation, activating massive Interdiction Engines of their own, designed to amplify their mass shadows and deny any deathship an inertialess escape. The strongest and longest-range tractor beams we could make were ready to plink and lock onto their targets, with Mentats using True Seeking at the guns for that initial lock... which would only need to persist for seconds before the starfighters and gunboats were all over them.

There were Scout ships waiting in stealth in reserve to track down any ships that slipped our net. We did not want undead in inertialess ships bouncing around the galaxy...

------

Our surroundings pretty much boiled away as a billion square miles of super-intense sunlight blew through the fortifications of the Imperial Palace, and hurricanes of matter now taking up a lot of area exploded around us and our Vajras.

Frictionless, the million-plus degrees of heat flowed past us, the incidental radiation was ignored. We were both nominally immune to non-magical Fire and Radiant damage, which pretty much encompassed everything that this beam could do to us, and our Vajras were capable of sending the solar winds of exploding plasma streaming past us... that which wasn’t caught on the weight of the heavy light and just vented out into space beyond, of course.

The beam actually came from below us, not above, turning the Palace into an atomic fountain of plasma streaming into space beyond. The Palace was actually wider than the beam, but that hardly mattered once matter started getting that thermal dump and plasma was vented in all directions.

Oh, and the kicker of vivus attached might have helped.

The Palace peeled and was blasted open and away, folding away from the path of the beam, surrounded in apocalyptic amounts of superheated matter. Matter couldn’t take it, and most of it simply vaporized from the secondary blasts, and if it didn’t, at the very least it was slagged and on the cusp of doing so.

We heard the Princes sort of scream, but that didn’t last very long... as in, less than a second before they were gone. There was only a second or two of the blast passing us by, but it burned completely through the Palace, like a colossal surgical laser, and then was done.

------

“Argh!”

The Emperor snapped his head, er, skull around in shock.

The undead Wyrm Prince had Chalice inserted in his face, and all my Tails around the flaming Sword in his grip. I wrenched, pulled, and kicked back as the Emperor lunged at me, but he was just a bit slow...

The psychic whammy and TK He put out there just vanished as they hit my Null, and I arrived right back at Fuzzy’s side, the boiling plasma slowly expanding away from us, clearing the space.

The Emperor had protected Himself, and the Wyrm Prince, from that ravening blast of sunlight. Curiouser and curiouser, eh?

“Funny thing about liches,” I said to him. Plenty of atmosphere around us, even if it was as hot as a corona. Void-black power around Him made the Emperor immune to the heat as He stared at us, a ruby blade of psychic force held in His hand now, in lieu of any other weapon.

“Liches, they all require a Phylactery. Phylacteries need to be set up ahead of time.”

“Really?” Briggs asked rhetorically, as suddenly Beat lit up with a golden light so hard it could compare to adamantine.

“Yeah. They tend to be portable objects that can be hidden easily, or indestructible enough not to worry about. That Celestial Beacon was definitely not it.” I flourished the burning Sword in my grip; the Emperor was still trying to grab it through my Null.

“Wow, letting your rebelling Warlord hold onto your Phylactery for all these years, knowing it would be safe because he couldn’t give up the emblem of his station.” Briggs gave the Emperor a thumbs-up. “You are a clever bastard, Your Imperial Majesty, sir!”

“Return my Sword to me!” He stated, a cold fury and uncertainty behind His voice now. He started to advance on us, and Briggs and I jetted backwards in return.

Eye sockets and halo flaring, ruby mindsword shimmering with black lights, he followed.

We only needed a second or two, and He couldn’t fly very fast with just psionics, or dimension-jump at all... not that He dared leave us be.

We got out of the earlier Interdiction, and promptly halted. Briggs just slid over in front of me to take any charge, while I cut a Rift open.

“Hey, Ma, here ya go.” I shoved the flaming Sword into the gash in space, and the Emperor actually howled as a hand near as big as I was closed on it and yanked it out of sight, the Rift closing instantly.

Briggs blew the Interdiction back up before the Emperor realized He could flee, and I backed him up.

“You... what have you done?” He demanded, facing us there in the midst of a rolling plasma field made of superheated Imperial Palace.

“It’s not about us,” I replied with a big smile, sliding out from behind Briggs. “It’s about what the Emperor of Humanity is about to do. Or rather, His Soul, locked up inside that pig-sticker for five thousand years and change because He couldn’t bear to die with His work unfinished.”

I tilted my head, popping my neck. “Congratulations, Your Imperial Majesty! You’re about to save the mortal plane!”

--------

Well, I’ve certainly been waiting long enough for this, Sage Sama, virtua Titan of the Rantha Hags, mused as she lifted the Emperor’s Sword and felt the soul trapped within.

She focused her Null, strong enough to defy reality manipulation by the Warp Gods in their home realm, let alone an Emperor, and tapped the Sword.

The immense psionic fortification and enhancement of the material, making it Indestructible, was Nulled, and it went back to being merely unbelievably tough.

The Sword was big enough for an ogre, but looked like a mere dagger in her hand as she slammed it against the eager edge of her own Chalice.

With a whine of protest that such a thing shouldn’t be possible, and could certainly be fixed with enough time and power, the Sword split apart, its impressive Legend-level flames, more like focused and contained plasma than fire, dying away.

Light boiled up out of it... curdled blue, beliefs fractured and fallen under the power of a psychological blow five thousand years ago, a betrayal and blow that had damaged him so badly that he had embraced lichdom in defiance of them, once again thinking he could overcome the inevitable degradation to Evil of the willing undead.

As it did, the entirety of the Warp about her began to ring and to swirl in sympathy. The mad roiling and color-shifting stilled, and instead it began to blow, and glow with a new and powerful Light.

The Emperor slowly took form, gathering in psychic power and ectoplasm, reforming a spiritual body. The Warp began to widen and clear about them as his body materialized, standing there almost as tall as she was... but somehow less real, less absolute.

The storms and chaos of the Warp was being pushed away from his presence, but it had no effect on her. He studied her, all there in her mutated magnificence, feeling massive resistance coming from her that could defy his power easily, but was unable to see any deeper than that.

“Who are you?” he finally asked, sensing no hostility from this inhuman creature, but certain it was no demon, regardless of appearance.

“The Progenitor of the Ranthas,” Sage Sama replied calmly, and the Emperor twitched as her voice raised waves in the Warp, as if something was responding to her call...

“Your intentions?” he asked perfunctorily, brow furrowing.

“Making sure you do your job.”

His eyes narrowed. “My work is not done. I need to return to life and complete what I started.”

“Your work is complete, save for the final part... bringing down the Warp Gods,” she refuted calmly.

He stared at her, studying her. He could sense dimly, at the edge of his senses, the foul Gods of the Warp were starting to turn on him, aware that he was here... and wondering what to do about it. “And how do I do that?” he had to ask. That seemed so ludicrous...

She lifted with one of her six arms, the massive Sword there chiming in a cadence that the entire Warp was echoing back at her, pointing up.

He lifted his eyes, and stared at the sky revealed beyond the Warp, and the Presences there now looking back at him.

“No...” he blurted out in horror.

“Yes,” Sage Sama replied calmly, totally unsurprised as he became aware that there were existences out there beyond the leeching existence of the Warp Gods, and the faith-dependent entities so many races called ‘gods’. His attempt to free humanity from the existence of all gods through the advancement of psionics and science was now staring non-finite entities in the face, and realizing that there really were divinities out there, and it was not possible to be beyond them...

Oooh ohhh oooh, Tremble, we come...

Something seemed to be converging on them from all directions. The wide-eyed Emperor turned his eyes back to her, nearly wild with the immensity and challenge to all he’d believed in.

The Warp Gods could be beaten because they were finite, leeches, agglomerations of psychic power. But those, those things were not dependent on mortal belief and power at all, they represented profound forces that formed the foundation of reality itself!

“I will not allow you to enslave humanity to things beyond the mortal realm!” he swore desperately.

“I will not allow you to enslave humanity to your path,” she returned with equal calm, and golden light more solid than reality covered all six of her Swords.

She is Gold... His alarm, amazement, and disbelief was plain on his face as he stared at her.

The Radiant were easy to dupe and manipulate with their natural charitable tendencies and willingness to sacrifice for others... but they were also incredibly troublesome with their tendency to undertake actions in total defiance of what was necessary in support of what they deemed ‘right’.

And what the two of them deemed Right was obviously at distinct odds right now.

Tremble, oooh ohhh oooh, Tremble, we come...

The Warp was singing back to Chalice and the Cups, they were all chiming now, building on some simple melody, as the words rose and swelled...